The Reader and Meursault

In the first part of The Stanger, Albert Camus uses blunt, action-driven tone to establish the indifference the narrator, Meursault, views the world with. Despite the narrator's journey through several emotionally charged situations (attending his mother's funeral, a marriage proposal, and making heavily moral decisions), he does not seem to care about others' opinions, the consequences of his decisions, or societal norms. Meursault's rejection of the social paradigm is so brazen that it ultimately results in his death. 

As I read the first half of The Stranger, I found myself increasingly absorbed in Meursault's world. At the end of Chapter 6, when Meursault shoots the arab man, I initially did not give his actions second thoughts. As the "sea carried up a thick, fiery breath", and "the trigger gave", and "it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness", I could not relate the absurdity of the murder to the absurdity of Meursault's character (Camus 59). Meursault was hollow, a vessel to view his world, my world, and society through.

Camus's accomplishments do not solely lie in the story's existentialist themes, but also in the richness of his main character. Meursault is so perfectly insouciant to the constructs of the world that the reader cannot help but meet Camus's outsider with the same indifference. This is, to rely on Nabokovian language, the true "magic" of The Stranger; the reader simultaniously completely understands Meursault and is completely perplexed by him. This is because the reader views Meursalt's world through existentialist eyes, yet lives within the social paradigm that Camus uses Meursault to challenge.